The Bathroom Window
by vixenmoon
Summary: Season 5: After Ross says Rachel, Emily goes out the bathroom window but it doesn't go to plan... Monica and Chandler begin their 'Honeymoon'
1. There Will be no Waltz

Setting: After Ross says Rachel, Emily locks herself in the bathroom and Ross pleads with her to come out…

It was the worst thing that could possibly have happened.

'Emily,' Ross called from outside the bathroom door. He wasn't getting any responses any more. Did that mean she was listening? He had been left alone, so that he could try appealing to her in private. How could he have said what he did? He felt like banging his head against the wall. He'd talked her into marriage and then talked her into not postponing the wedding after the church had been demolished.

He'd been surprised by Rachel turning up like that, he really had been – how could he have shown his surprise by blurting out her name just then. Yes, he'd been thinking about her – why had she changed her mind? There didn't seem to be a reason. Not that he was unhappy about it. It wouldn't have been right if she hadn't been there, that was for sure, that was why he had wanted her invited over Emily's reluctance. Oh my God, he thought. There was that.

He called into the bathroom again,

'Sweetie, please come out. I love you, you're the only one I want to spend the rest of my life with.' Suddenly there a scream from inside the bathroom. Ross registered that it sounded a little far away, but the urgent thing was to get to Emily.

'Emily!' he yelled out, ramming the door with his shoulder. 'What's wrong? What's happened, speak to me! Emily!'

'Hey,' Chandler said running up to Ross, 'What's going on?'

'Something's happened to Emily, I heard her scream, help me break the door down.' Chandler helped him and suddenly the door gave way to their pressure. They skidded as they tried to stop themselves charging to far into the room.

'Where – ' Chandler said, because the room was quite empty. But Ross noticed it first – the bathroom window was wide open.

'Emily!' He ran to the window and yelped in surprise. 'Oh sweetie!' Outside, on the path, lay his bride, looking up at him, white faced and dazed. 'She's outside, she must have fallen,' Ross said, over his shoulder to Chandler, 'I'm coming, Emily!' Ross announced to Emily, and before Chandler could suggest something else, like walking, or perhaps running outside, via the front door, Ross had gone through the window. Too late, Chandler saw Ross's foot catch on the edge of the window. There was another scream from Emily and a cry from Ross. As Chandler rushed to the window, he realised that Monica, Joey and Rachel were with him in the bathroom. Crowded at the window, they saw Ross on the ground, with Emily underneath him. 'Oh sweetie I'm sorry,' Ross was saying, moving off her body. They wondered why Emily did and said nothing, but as Ross moved aside, they saw that she was clutching at her right wrist, gasping in pain. Monica said, in horror,

'We'd better get help, that looks broken.' Monica moved away from the window. 'I'll get help.' Rachel stayed, although she wasn't sure whether she should.

'Are you okay?' Chandler and Joey could hear Ross ask Emily. They could hear a very wobbly,

'No.' Ross was also holding his right wrist.

'Better make that two,' Chandler murmured, although Monica had already disappeared.

'Get a doctor!' Ross called. 'We've both got broken wrists.'

'Oh my God,' Rachel said. 'Can it get any worse?' Whatever she'd wanted to have happen, this certainly wasn't it.

'It'll be okay,' Joey said, 'Doctors are good at that kind of stuff.'

'I shouldn't have come,' Rachel moaned. 'I should have stayed with Phoebe.'

'Rach, it's not your fault,' Joey said.

'This would never have happened if it wasn't for me!' Rachel said.

'What's going on here?' Emily's father demanded. He was standing at the doorway, looking a little unsteady, as though he was already drunk. 'What's happened to this door? They're ready for the waltz.'

'Er,' Chandler said, 'I'm sorry Mr Waltham but I think your daughter has broken her wrist.'

'Her what?'

'Wrist,' Chandler said, shaking his own right wrist. 'She, er, fell out the window.'

'How on earth did she fall out of the window?' Mr Waltham asked incredulously. 'Did that man push her.'

'No he didn't, she did it all by herself,' Chandler said quickly.

'Hurry up and get a doctor!' Ross called from outside, which seemed to break Emily's father out of his abstraction.

'He's hurt too,' Rachel said.

'Good!' Emily's father said. 'This is all his fault. And that Rachel whoever she is.'

'What's going on darling?' Emily's stepmother said, having joined the crowd in the bathroom. 'I hope I'm not interrupting anything,' she said, managing to imply the worst. 'The waltz is due to start.'

'Emily's got a broken wrist,' Mr Waltham said, pushing past his wife. 'I'm going to help her.'

'Well,' Mrs Waltham said, looking puzzled. 'She can still use her legs can't she?' As one, Chandler, Joey and Rachel pushed their way out of the room.

At the hospital, it was found that not only was Emily's right wrist broken, it needed an operation to stabilise the bones so that they would heal properly. Ross was at first relieved to find that his wrist was not broken, only sprained, but was told that although he needed no surgery, he too would have to have his wrist immobilised in a splint.

'It could have been worse,' his father said. 'If it was the other way around, you'd have to pay the for the cost of an operation. Seeing as she's a British citizen, she gets treated for free.' Ross glared at him. 'So have you fixed things up with her yet?'

'No.' That worried him. He'd wanted to, more than anything. He had told her how much he loved her, but she had been too preoccupied with pain and intermittent nausea. He had also not been thinking straight, with his own pain and with hers as well. Now he wasn't in very much pain and he had a chance to think about the situation. He leaned back in his chair in the waiting room and closed his eyes, wishing his problems would go away. He'd wondered before if things could get any worse. He shouldn't have.


	2. Someone has to benefit

It had taken Chandler some time to find Ross. First he had had to get everyone else out of the Waltham's house, especially Rachel. It would only have been a matter of time before everyone worked out who she was, and there was enough uproar already. They had retreated to the hotel and made a very expensive call to Phoebe, each of them taking it in turns to tell her about the disaster, before belatedly asking her about herself.

Ross and Monica's parents had told them how things were with them, and during the long conversation, Chandler had nodded at Monica, in a way that he had hoped would convey the fact that he was going out to see Ross.

'Hey,' Chandler said.

'Hey,' Ross answered despondently. He was sitting in a waiting room at the hospital, and Chandler sat beside him on one of the hard plastic chairs.

'So, how is she?'

'They're operating now,' Ross said. 'Everything should be okay.' He shivered. 'I couldn't stand to see her arm like that…'

'They're going to put it back,' Chandler said, reassuringly. He had seen the arm as well, through the bathroom window. It reminded him of an injury he'd seen to a classmate at school, someone involved with something dreadful to do with stairs. That boy had had a broken leg, and Chandler had known that it was broken, because there was bone sticking right out, where it had no right to be. No bones had stuck out this time, so far as he had seen, but it had looked bad enough.

'Yes,' Ross said. Chandler waited for more, but half a minute passed and it seemed there would be no more. An elderly man with a zimmer frame made his way laboriously past them in the corridor.

'What are you going to do now?' Chandler asked. Ross shrugged.

'Well I'll see how she is when she wakes up. Talk to her, if she wants to talk to me.'

'You'll be coming back to the hotel?'

'Yeah.'

'The Walthams?' Chandler prompted.

'Her father said he wished that the only broken bones were the ones in my neck,' Ross said flatly.

'Ah. So no invitations to stay.'

'No.' An argument broke out down the corridor about someone nicking someone else's fags. The corridor seemed to amplify noise, if anything. How on earth did people get better in places like this?

'We'll have to get your stay at the hotel extended. That should be no big deal,' Chandler said. 'I mean you won't be wanting to go to Greece now. Not if Emily can't go.'

'Oh that,' Ross said, 'No.' He sighed. 'It seems a shame to waste it.' Chandler wondered for a moment whether Ross meant to go on his own, after all. That would be startlingly cold blooded of him and odd, considering he was acting so concerned right now. 'Tell Monica she can have the tickets,' Ross said. 'She knows where they are. They're in my room. She could take Rachel. Those two can have some fun anyway.'

'Right,' Chandler said, 'I'll tell her that.' There was another silence as he wondered whether Ross would say anything about Rachel, the innocent cause of this disaster. He couldn't help wondering if there was more to the 'wrong name' than a case of absent mindedness. What a time to be absent minded, with everyone watching you? But Ross volunteer no more, and Chandler forebore to ask. Ross was having a hard enough time as it was. He kept him company a little longer, but Ross didn't seem to need him there, and was lousy company anyway, so he made his excuses and left.

When he returned, he was relieved to find that Monica's parents were gone. This wasn't' only because they took up more than their fair share of room – and this was no gibe as to their weight – but because he felt self conscious about Monica. Even as he returned, hers were the first eyes he looked for.

'How's Ross?' Monica asked, when Chandler arrived. They already knew that his wrist was only sprained.

'He's waiting for Emily's operation to be over.'

'So she hasn't said anything to Ross yet?' Monica asked. Rachel looked up hopefully. She was wishing that Emily had told him that she never wanted to see him again, and that Ross would come back and they could all pretend that none of this had ever happened.

'Not yet,' Chandler said.

'Oh,' Monica said, avoiding looking at Rachel. Everyone avoided looking at Rachel, who just looked at the floor. So they were going to have to wait to find out…

'This is terrible,' Rachel exclaimed suddenly. 'I wish I'd never come. I should have stayed with Phoebe and kept her company. I'd better go home on the next plane.'

'He did say that you should go on the honeymoon,' Chandler said.

'What?' Rachel looked up in surprise.

'Honeymoon?' Monica said.

'You too,' Chandler said. 'He's got tickets for a honeymoon trip that no-one's going to take. There's no need for it to go to waste. Think about it – sun, sea.' Honeymoon suite, he added to himself, wistfully.

'We can't go on Ross's honeymoon!' Rachel exclaimed. 'It would be wrong.'

'How can it be wrong if he says you can do it?' Joey said.

'It just is,' Rachel said. 'I'm going to stick with my original plan and go home.'

'Well I,' Monica began, before catching Chandler's eye. 'I'll go by myself then.'

'I'll come to keep you company,' Joey said.

'I think Ross would say that would be wrong Joey,' Monica said, laughing. He'd say that her going with Chandler was wrong too, but what he didn't know, wouldn't hurt him. She felt almost light headed at the thought.


	3. New Plans

**New Plans**

She was not awake when they brought her back to the ward, but they let Ross in anyway, to sit beside her and be there when she did wake. He tried to think of what he could say. He'd apologised many times, to her face and through the bathroom door, but she hadn't been listening to any of it. Could he say all that again, while she was calm and get through to her? Would she listen to him, believe him? He hoped so. He didn't know how to make it better. If she didn't believe that he loved her, he didn't see how he could win.

As she stirred, he sat up straighter in his chair.

'Are you all right sweetie?' he asked nervously. She opened her eyes, looked at him and then looked at her arm.

'I suppose so. It hurts a bit.'

'Let me call the nurse,' Ross said. It was something he could do, something that would help her, and besides, Emily would not shout at him if a nurse was there. He was reasonably sure of that.

'It's all right, I suppose it's going to hurt a bit,' Emily said, sounding a bit tired. She pushed herself up in bed with her good arm, and then looked at him again. 'What about your arm?'

'This?' he asked, raising his right forearm. 'Oh, that aches a lot.' They would not give him any more pills for it, which he thought was unfair. 'It's not actually broken,' he admitted, 'but they said I had to wear a splint because it's a bad sprain. Apparently a sprained wrist is worse than an ankle. I sprained my ankle when I was seventeen and for a while there they thought it was broken. I actually thought it was broken too, I mean, it hurt so much.' He realised that she wasn't really listening to him, just looking at him. 'What?'

'I didn't think you'd still be here,' Emily said.

'Why wouldn't I be here?' he asked.

'Well, you'd be with your friends, and with – with Rachel.'

'No I don't.'

'I mean,' Emily said, as though he hadn't spoken, 'You've waited with me, you've seen that I'm all right, you've done your duty, you could go, and be with people you really want to be with.' But she wasn't looking at him as she said these things.

'No.'

'I mean, there's the honeymoon, and…' Words failed her and she looked at her arm.

'I'm not going anywhere, Emily. My wife is here, and that's where I am too.'

'You said her name.'

'I don't want to marry her, Emily.'

'Then why did you say her name?'

'Because I was shocked to see her. I didn't expect to see her there, she said she wasn't coming. I thought she was in New York, with Phoebe, and then suddenly I find that she's there. She's an important friend.'

'More than a friend,' Emily pointed out.

'Yes,' Ross said. Emily turned her head slowly to look at him. 'There's a history there, me seeing her in the ninth grade and everything, and we did date, but it's been over for more than a year. We broke up and even though we tried, we couldn't make it work again. Emily, my sister and my friends really wanted it to work, we really wanted it to work, it's not like anything was against us. But it didn't work. We're just not compatible, in that way.'

'Does she know that?'

'She should.'

'That's not what I asked.' There was a silence as Ross struggled for the words, settling for,

'Doesn't it take two people to make a relationship? Rachel might have those ideas about me – I'm not saying she does, it's just, let's say she, she had some idea that we could get back together, well that couldn't possibly work if I didn't want a relationship with her, which I don't, not like that. What I want counts you know. I stopped wanting to try to get back together with Rachel when I met you. I'd dated other girls since Rachel but no-one stopped me from hoping that we could get back together until you. I want this relationship, but if you won't believe me, and try, then I'll be on my own here.' There was a silence before Emily said quietly.

'All right.'

'What?' he didn't know what she meant.

'We'll try and make it work.'

'Hey, we've even got matching injuries,' Ross said, raising his splinted forearm. 'How can it not work?' He leant over to kiss her, and that was the final balm required. She cried a little, but her face was much softer and less defensive when it was over.

'So what do we do now?' she asked. 'We're going to look an odd couple in Greece.'

'I gave our honeymoon tickets away because I didn't think you'd be ready to go by tomorrow.' Or even that she'd go. 'But we can do something else, just the two of us. There must be something to do in this country that would be good.'

'Shropshire,' she said. 'That's where I grew up. Let's go there. You can see where I came from.'

'Done,' Ross said happily.


	4. Welcome, Mr and Mrs Geller

**Welcome, Mr and Mrs Geller**

The Honeymoon suite had been especially prepared and Monica and Chandler were speechless as they were escorted into the rooms. The centrepiece was:

_Welcome Mr and Mrs Geller_

'You like it?' the hotel staffer asked with a worried frown. Married couples were usually gushing, though sometimes silent and dreamy eyed. There had been one or two who had already had their first marital tiff, but these two, just stood together, silently.

'Oh, we love it,' Chandler said.

'Yeah,' Monica said. But the staffer wasn't altogether sure that they did in fact love it. However, there wasn't much that could be done about it and the staffer shut the door on them.

Monica and Chandler stared at the sign. Then the hearts. Then the flowers. Then the red bedspread. Then the sign.

'I guess you're going to be the one wearing the pants in this relationship,' Chandler said, with a smile.

'What relationship?' Monica asked. She had felt so audacious, going to the airport, making sure that everyone else was fooled into thinking that she was leaving alone, and flying off to Athens. She had begun to have reservations on the way to the honeymoon hotel, which she had attributed to travel sickness, an explanation Chandler had accepted.

'Hey, you're not dumping me already?' Chandler asked. His tone was joking but his eyes were not. 'You haven't gotten bored with me?' He put his hands on her shoulders. Looking at him, there was no way she could even pretend that this was the answer.

'I couldn't be bored with you.'

'Did I do something wrong?'

'Nothing, you've done nothing wrong.'

'Sure I didn't take up too much room on the arm rest?'

'Sure.' She broke away from his embrace because it was easier to put her thoughts into words. 'It's just this,' she said, unable to come up with anything. She swept her arm around to match her words. Somehow, it was enough for him to understand.

'It's a big thing, going on a honeymoon when we've only just got together,' Chandler said, 'Especially when no-one expects us to be on it together,' Monica said. 'They don't excpet us to be together at all - anywhere! What are they going to say?'

'There's no use worrying about that now. They've got to find out before they can say anything. Why don't we just enjoy it as a holiday? The holiday is yours, it was given to you.'

'Ross…' Monica said, remembering that she hadn't given her brother a thought since London. How was he faring? Did he even have a wife any more?

'Forget him,' Chandler said, 'If he hadn't given away the tickets, it would have gone to waste. So you've taken holiday, and you've invited someone you wanted along, since Rachel didn't take up her side of it. Though I hope I'd win a contest against her on this one.'

'Rachel…' Monica said. She hadn't given her best friend a thought either.

'Forget Rachel,' Chandler said. Then Monica remembered Phoebe, due to give birth at any time soon - needless to say, she hadn't given her a thought.

'And Phoebe…'

'Forget Phoebe.' This was too much for Monica.

'We can't forget all our friends. You're going to say forget Joey next.'

'No I'm not,' Chandler said, 'What does Joey need to be remembered for? He's been having a great time. What I'm saying, I know it's a big thing for us to be here, not just here in a honeymoon suite in a foreign country. It's you and me, Mon. Is it a good idea at all? Here's our chance to find out. We don't have to get carried away with all this.' He swept his arm around to indicate the decorations. 'Let's just be two people, trying something new. We don't have to do anything we don't want. Maybe - ' He didn't like to say this, but it had to be said, 'We might think this is all a bad idea. We can work all that out in peace and quiet.'

'Until we get back and everyone finds out about us,' Monica said, but she was already sounding a little more at ease. Things would be right between herself and Chandler, even if the romance didn't work out.

'We'll solve that problem if we need to,' Chandler said. 'But why worry about that if we don't need to?' She knew what he meant. He meant that if things didn't work out, he would find some way to return without making it known that they had been together. It could then just be their secret. But she found herself thinking that they certainly didn't need to worry about that yet. Chandler added, 'If it make you more comfortable - and it would make me more comfortable anyway - we could get rid of all this wedding decoration.'

'Yes,' Monica said, 'We can tidy it away.'

'And then it will just be a hotel room.'

'With one bed.'

'If that's a problem, we don't have to do anything,' he said, with a grin.

'It won't be a problem,' Monica said firmly. What on earth were they here for? 'Let's get rid of the decoration and then…'


End file.
